Getting Over My Ego To Serve My Clients Properly | The Year I Started Offering Albums & Wall-Art
The year was 2016, and I was just starting out as a photographer.
I was both humble and full of ego.
Humble, because I wanted people to accept me and this new profession. I wanted clients to feel at ease with me. I was kind, and warm, and learned to laugh a lot more than I used to in academia. It felt nice.
Full of EGO, because I thought I knew what’s best. I thought I knew what clients wanted. With some things, it really feels like it was my way or the highway.
At least when it came to one specific thing: albums & wall art (or prints for the wall)
My Broken Assumptions About Offering Albums to Clients
I assumed that people can get those things elsewhere. I assumed it was not my job to offer them that.
It wasn’t my *responsibility*, I thought.
That’s the stinger.
Between 2016 and 2019, I really and truly didn’t feel like I owed clients an album design experience, a photo reveal, or any kind of discussion about how they can have easy access to their memories - by printing them in a book or for the wall.
There was a kind of complete blindness I had when it came to all of that.
“I’m not in the business of printing books,” I’d say out loud to anyone who listened (mostly my friend Liz Cooper, who was a seasoned photographer by then, and was helping me start and run my other business, Quirky Love Photography, where I stubbornly applied the same philosophy to my wedding clients. I’m lucky that she listened, to be honest.).
“I’m a photographer. An artist. Not a book printer.” And so it went, for years.
The excuses I invented to get out of the obligation of offering albums and wall art were hilarious. They seem funny to me now, at least 😄
Why did I make so many excuses?
To be fair, I don’t really know.
Perhaps it’s because it meant learning a whole extra world of things, and I was at that time a little bit burnt out from learning (at the time, I was 35, coming out of a long stint in academia, and feeling rather let down about all the hard work I did there that resulted in nothing).
Photographing people was hard work enough, I probably thought. Why not just do more of that? More photo-sessions, more families. Time designing albums is time away from new clients!
So instead, what did I do?
How I Gave Clients What I Thought They Wanted: Fast Digitals
After a photo session, I worked my butt off to edit galleries quickly. I thought it’s most important for people to have their photographs back, so I broke expectations and often delivered photographs from candid family sessions back in a week. Some photographers took 30 or 60 days. Not me, I thought proudly. Not me. I get their photos back real quick. That’s what they want.
But here’s what that “delivery” process looked like:
Yep. This email pretty much sums it up.
Hey, here are your photos. Enjoy.
And then I would sit and wait, hoping to get a response like, “OMG we love them.” And pray I don’t get anything like “They’re great!”.
Because, when you get literally four words from clients about your photographs, you learn to read between the lines. Or you think you can, anyway.
It’s so hilarious when I think about it. Instead of making myself a part of the reveal process, being present with them when I shared their photographs, I sat on the sidelines, waiting and hoping. And reading between the lines.
Sad, but not so sad. I needed to take a couple of years to learn this lesson, I suppose.
The Day Everything Changed
Very rarely in life can we pinpoint a moment of change to one very specific moment. Normally it’s a gradual progression of events, a gradual change.
Not for this.
For me, the day was December 10th, 2019. I was in a zoom coaching session with Megan Kuethen. There were multiple people logged in for this group session, and Megan was coaching about “In-Person Sales”.
It was a term I’d heard before and actively ignored. In-person sales was what I had done as a youngster, selling door-to-door vacuums. It wasn’t something I wanted to do with my photography clients. I owed them more dignity, I thought.
So I remember telling Megan a version of this.
And as my excuses piled on top of each other, feeling increasingly flustered as she patiently listened to me… I said something like “It would take me so long, anyway, to design albums, and go to people’s houses and show them their photos, and talk about their wall art prints…”
That was it.
I think Megan’s patience had run out.
She collected herself and leaned in toward the camera.
She very calmly said,
“Look. If you are saying that you would rather not take an extra ten hours per family, to provide them with the service they truly deserve, to serve them in the most meaningful way you can, to deliver the value you owe them, and to earn far more money for your business while doing so? Well, that’s on you.”
I was floored.
My cheeks were burning.
I tried to smile, but it probably came out like a grimace. I had the faint and uncomfortable feeling that other people were watching this exchange. Worse, that it was being recorded by the head coach so that it could help other folks in our private group who would watch the replay.
I was… unable to say much.
I think I said, “Thank you for your honesty,” and let someone else take a turn.
Megan was ruthless with me that day, and I owe my awakening about my business to her.
Gradually Coming To Terms With Being Better
It wasn’t an instant shift in my practices after that. Admittedly, it took a few days for me to get over my bruised ego.
I even posted it on my Instagram stories - what Megan had said. I was seeking validation for my feelings, and bless you some of you even wrote me to validate me.
However, I was wrong.
Megan was right.
And I am far better off for it.
The moment I got over my feelings, I took action. Before Christmas that year, I researched projectors and projector screens, and I bought the best.
I sought out album companies that were going to provide my clients with a luxury heirloom product. I cared about the environment, so I settled on Floricolor - a boutique Portuguese album printing company that is eco-sustainable and offers a lifetime warranty. I ordered sample albums and got excited about showing them to clients.
I learned multiple albums and wall-art design software and settled on Fundy.
Once I’d made up my mind, I was really motivated.
Testing Out My New Approach
Because Cov#d hit in the intervening months, I had to wait nearly half a year to test out my new approach to providing clients with value.
I had a wedding and a family session nearly back to back in the summer of 2020, and I did two photo reveals with them on the same day.
I had a suitcase for my projector and albums, and I felt like a traveling salesman. But it felt GOOD, knowing that I was there for them.
There to ask what THEY need, to find out what THEY want, to serve THEM to the fullest.
An overview of all the pages in julie & Jim’s final photo album
The Biggest Lessons I Learned From In-Person Sales
So here’s what I learned.
First of all, sitting in the same room (or on the same zoom call which I’ve done countless times since then) with your clients while they view their photographs for the first time is an indescribable feeling.
You see with your own eyes how people experience their moments. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they grimace.
One of the first families I did this with, my client grimaces and told me she hated a particular photograph of herself. I actually loved that photo of her, but because I saw the reaction it caused, I took it out of the final gallery. And it never made it into her album. In fact, that photo album I designed for her was full of the photos SHE loved. Not the ones I thought she should love.
That’s the biggest lesson by far: that to serve your clients fully, you must stop assuming you know what they want, and really LISTEN and pay attention to what they tell you they want.
No photographer is above their client. We serve people. That is our job. To do a good job, we must listen to people. Not assume.
Another lesson I learned is that people really and truly do value having easy access to their memories. Having a beautiful album on their coffee table that they can flip to - or having photographs of their families on the wall. Photographs that I took.
They really do have walls in their homes where they plan on displaying their photographs. People make plans like this because they really do value their memories. This is something Megan, my coach, had told me, but I hadn’t believed it. Not until I saw it with my own two eyes.
Finally, I learned that you CAN earn much more money by offering people what they really value.
Implementing in-person sales has led to a 50-75% increase in my revenue. It’s how I was able to make more money during Covid than the year before.
And all while having happier clients, who had a richer experience and got everything they wanted.
Here’s a sample of wall-art I designed for clients a couple of months ago. Families send me a photograph of their wall at home. I superimpose the photographs over that wall in different ways. Being able to see the images on your wall like this can really help you to make a decision on layout and size, and even whether you want a frame or to go with canvas.
Most People Never Feel This Kind Of Emotion On The Job
A couple of months ago, I was rewatching a zoom photo reveal with a wedding couple I had photographed. The woman on the reveal was crying from happiness at seeing their photographs, and her husband was visibly emotional, too. You could see it even on the poor zoom recording.
My husband walked into the room and saw a bit of the replay.
He said, “In my 25 years as a software developer, I’ve never had anyone react to anything I’ve produced for them in this way. Your job is awesome.”
He’s right. It is awesome. And by not offering an in-person photo reveal, I was basically missing out on most of that awesomeness.
Making Up For Lost Time
Each new client of mine now has a private photo reveal. It’s just a part of what I do. Instead of emailing you a digital gallery, I want to share it with you, live. Then, I can send you the gallery :)
We do the photo reveals on zoom these days. The projector is collecting dust in the suitcase.
I turned to zoom photo reveals because of the pandemic. But actually, I’ll likely continue to do them this way even after things open up.
It’s less disruptive for people, I don’t have to set up my massive projector in their homes, and they feel their photographs just as deeply, it seems. Most people get very emotional. (but there’s never any pressure to cry! haha)
I make sure to always ask: which were your favourite photographs? Did any surprise you? Which didn’t you like? Because I’m paying attention. I want to know what was meaningful to people.
During photo reveals, I also share my screen to show clients the album I have designed for them. We go through it page by page. Each page is designed to tell a mini-story of the overall session.
Some clients love all their pages. Some clients want to take away a few pages. Or add a few extras.
We play around with things until it feels JUST right. Only then, so we put the order in.
And in about four weeks, my clients get their albums shipped to them (by me! I always do quality control first), and gush about how much they love them.
And sometimes they send me happy photos like this :)
To All Past Clients
If you’ve had a photography session with me, and didn’t have a chance to have a photo reveal, and a custom album or wall-art design, please write me! info@viaramileva.com
I’ll be so happy to design an album for you with the photographs we took of your session. To make it up to you, I’ll even include in the album any photographs that you want me to - photos you’ve taken since!
To Photographers Who Don’t Offer Printed Products
I get it. I was you. I fought hard to stay that way.
But one day, when my ego stopped getting in the way, I realized it wasn’t the best way we could be. To be a family photographer and not offer families a solid option to see and access their photographs in real life, without having to search through dozens of digital files in some forgotten gallery or USB key.
If you’re not sure how to get started, write me: info@viaramileva.com
I’ll be glad to give you a hand, just like Megan once did with me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s blog. It was a little departure from the usual: showing you happy family sessions!
It’s important that we talk about our failures and what we’ve learned from them, though. That’s what i tried to do here. If you enjoyed this post, please leave me a comment.